A
friendly reader asked me to explain why the Church has been fought so
fiercely throughout her history even though she is the preacher of the
Truth. He also wants to know why true Catholics, who do not compromise
with present-day errors and remain faithful to the immutable teaching of
Our Lord Jesus Christ are so relentlessly attacked.

It
seems to me that the reader could have broadened the scope of his question
even further. Persecutions against the Church and today’s true Catholics
are historic prolongations of those carried out against Our Lord Jesus
Christ. How to explain that the Man-God, who is the Truth, the Way and the
Life was persecuted to the point of being crucified between two vulgar
thieves?

This
question was given a luminous answer by one of the greatest Church Doctors
of all time, Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hyppo. To facilitate the readers’
understanding, I reproduce here, slightly adapted, the teaching of the
great Doctor of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Saint Augustine (by Fra Angelico)

Commenting on the famous phrase of Terentius, “truth engenders hatred,”
Saint Augustine [Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 23] asks himself how to
explain such an illogical fact.

Indeed,
he says, man naturally loves happiness. Now, happiness is the joy born of
the truth.

Thus,
it is an aberration for anyone to see the man who preaches truth in the
name of God as an enemy.

Having
thus enunciated the issue, the holy doctor goes on to explain it. Human
nature has such a propensity to the truth that when man loves something
contrary to the truth he still wants that something to be true. In so
doing he falls into error by persuading himself of something which in
reality is false.

Therefore, someone must open his eyes. Now then, since man does not allow
anyone to show him that he was mistaken, for the same reason he tolerates
no one to show him the error in which he finds himself.

And the
Doctor of Hyppo notes: In so doing, some men hate the truth for the sake
of that which they have taken as true! They love the light of truth but
not being reprehended by it… They love it when it shows itself to them;
they hate it when it makes them see who they are.

This is
how such men are punished for their disloyalty: they do not want to be
unveiled by it and nevertheless it blows their cover. And yet, it — the
truth — remains hidden to their eyes. “This is precisely how the human
heart is shaped. Blind and slothful, unworthy and dishonest, it hides
while not allowing anything to be hidden from it. So it happens to be
unable to flee from the eyes of the truth, but the truth flees from its
eyes.” With these words, Saint Augustine concludes his masterly
commentary.